"Everything's out of the back of the truck, right Babe?"
"I dunno, I'll check."
"Everything's out Alyssa; I just got out the last of the firewood out of the bed."
"Alright Johnny, can you go ahead and get a fire going?"
"Sure thing."
"This early, It's only six?"
"Yeah Dan, It'll start getting dark in an hour or so. Might as well get one going before we'd need to pull out flashlights."
"Mommy, can we make s'mores?"
"Sure thing Sweetie, after we finish setting up the tents and your uncle gets a fire going".
"YYYYAAAAYYYY!!! Hurry up Unkee Johnny!"
....A Few Hours Later...
My two brothers and I sat around the crackling fire. The first day of our family camping trip had drawn to a close and We were now just sitting around the fire while Alyssa put my niece Kylie to bed.
"Is she out now?" Danny asked his wife as she rejoined out little round table.
"Out like a rock," she replied, nodding, as she sat back down in her lawn chair, "that little girl could sleep through the end of the world and then some." "How was it that you were able to come anyway, Johnny?" She then asked me, "I thought school was going on for you?"
"They decided to postpone till this... issue passes," I replied, "it's kinda hard to find substitutes when people are turning into ponies left and right and a week is now 365 days long." It's not like I'm complaining: any reason for time out of school is a good enough reason for me.
"What tomorrow supposed to be anyway? Thorsday?" Tim asked, chuckling. "By the power of Asgarde!" He then proclaimed, holdin a beer bottle up like Mlojiner.
"Yeah," Alyssa nodded, "and after that it's wagnesday."
I couldn't help but chuckle at names. Whoever this Discord guy was, he does have some peculiar sense of humor: Thorsday, Wagnesday, Fried-Zucchini-Day.
"At least they know who's causing this," I said, taking a swig out of my can of coke.
"Who?" They all asked nearly simultaneously.
I sighed. Of course, how could I forget that I live with people who wouldn't even watch the news if 9/11 version 2.0 was happening. "Apparently, a villain from that show My Little Pony called Discord. He's apparently the physical embodiment of chaos which can warp reality for his own amusement. And from what I've seen on the web: all he does is giant pranks that're amusing and completely harmless, like slip n' slide roads and chocolate milk rain."
"My Little Pony..." Dan muttered quietly, thinking. "You mean that show Kylie likes?" He then blurted out.
I nodded. Kylie was the only reason I knew who Discord was; she constantly kept trying to get me to watch the show with her when I babysitted. I'll admit it's a good cartoon, but it's not the kind of show I enjoy. I'll stick to my Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, thank you very much.
"And now he's here on Earth," Alyssa said, "turning people into ponies and making calendar maker's lives a living hell."
"That hits the head on the nail," I replied, taking another drink,"I don't know why, I guess it's just because he's chaos incarnate."
"And knowing our luck," Tim said jokingly, "one of us might just get turned into a pony, probably Johnny with his 'luck of the Irish' .'"
We all shared a big laugh at that. All my life, I've had the worst luck imaginable. I always lost coin tosses and Rock Paper Scissors. No matter how much time I spent around a sick person, be it five minutes or a few hours, I ALWAYS catch the bug they have. The kid in front of me in the lunch-line at school always got the last unburned piece of pizza. Sure, it's a pain in my behind but it at least keeps life interesting.
I scoffed, "I may have the worst luck this side of Vegas, but, there's like... six billion people on the planet. My chance of waking up as a pony is the same as y'all's."
For the next hour or so, we continued to talking about whatever came to mind: movies, the weather, politics, what we would do with a million dollars, all that good stuff. When the fire was in its death throes, we all decided to hit the hay and me and Tim climbed into out shared tent. Tommorrow, we'd be going down to the lake after breakfast and breakfast was pancakes! My favorite!
And with thoughts what was to come in my mind, I quickly drifted asleep, bundled up in my nice warm sleeping bag.
It looked like I had stepped into your cliche bar as I passed through the door. Well, cliche except for the fact that is was full of impossible people.
An Argonian stood behind the counter, wiping a mug. Squads of XCOM, Wehrmacht, and NCR troopers sat drinking the various booths. A pair of World War Two GIs were having a game of pool and the Courier and Lone Wanderer were playing darts on the far wall.
No one there seemed to notice me as I made my way over to the bar and sat down on one of the stools. "What do you want?" the Argonian Barkeep began as he made his way over to me, his eyes still focused on the mug he was wiping. But when he saw me, his eyes went wide.
"My sincere apologies," he said, bowing, "I didn't realize that it was you! Here's your usual." With that, he snapped his fingers and a shot glass filled with a clear liquid blinked existence on the counter in front of me.
"Thanks... I guess" I said, "how much do I owe?"
"You owe nothing sir, consider this one... on the house."
"Thanks!" I smiled. This dream is better than the ones I usually have. No dragons to slay, no chaos daemons trying to suck me into the warp, not even a damsel in distress to save. I let out a content sigh, this was just going to be a nice relaxing dream with no sanity reducing weirdness.
"Aren't you going to drink that? It'd be a shame to waste a good drink?" I looked back up at my bartender and he was no longer a lizard, he had become a dark blue pegasus. I stared at him in utter confusion; why in the heck was a pony here? Maybe it's just because I got ponies in the brain because I got ponies on the brain due to...
"I asked you a question: You going to drink that?" He asked again, breaking me out of my trance.
"Yeah, no need to get your panties in a knot," I stated, picking up the shot glass. "Bottoms up," I proclaimed and gulped it down.
I immediately regretted that choice. Whatever liquor that was, it left me coughing as it burned its way down my throat. "Je*cough*sus Christ! what *cough* was that stuff!?!" I'm no lightweight but, jumping Jesus on a pogo stick! It feels like someone set fire to my insides!
"You don't look too hot, man," the pony said, a look of concern on his furry face. "The bathroom is over there if you need to hurl," he added, pointing a hoof towards a door next to the dartboard.
"Thanks for the info," I croaked out.
"You can say he looks positively blue," a thickly accented voice said behind before he was drowned out by a chorus of drunken laughter.
"Leave him alone Fritz!" The bartender shouted, "He's already going to have a tough enough time when he wakes up!"
Wait, what the heck does he mean a tough time? "What the hell are y'all talking about?"
"You'll see," The pony replied.
DONG DONG !!!
"What the hell is that?!?" I shouted at the top of my lungs in a fruitless attempt at being heard. Whatever that noise was, it was LOUD! I couldn't even hear myself think and I doubt anyone here could have heard a single word I said.
"Well crud, it's time for you to go," the pegasus shouted, "Look Johnny! Remember one thing: don't panic!!!"
"WHAT!?!"
"DON'T PAN-"
"I think Johnny's coming to!"
"Okay, go back outside now. We don't need to give him a heart attack too."
'Too'? What the hell does she mean by 'too'? I slowly opened my eyes to find my brother's wife squatting down next to me, looking down at me rather awkwardly.
"Ummm.... Johnny, this is going to sound odd but... Don't panic, okay?"
"What are you talking about?" I asked my mind still groggy.
Alyssa then picked up a small mirror that I had brought with me and showed me my reflection, my jaw promptly hit the floor.
All I saw was blue, blue, more blue: a dark blue muzzle, blue mane, light blue eyes, and a not-human face.
"Seems like your luck rubbed off on us."
I snapped my head to the right to see two more ponies, one white with a blonde mane and the grey with a two-toned blue mane, standing in the doorway of the tent. Well, more leaning against each other to avoid falling than standing.
"...Tim... Danny?"
Both of the ponies nodded.
I sat there in silence, staring at my brothers as my brain tried to process everything that was going on. A million questions were flying through my head at a mile a minute: how do I walk, what do ponies eat, what are my friends going to think, and most importantly, how do I react to this? It's not every day that you wake up in the body of a blue cartoon horse.
The resulting freakout could best be described as screaming and flailing of forelegs.